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Webinar on Innovative City and State Funding Approaches to Supporting Transitional Jobs & Subsidized Employment Programs

The webinar is the first of a series that highlights the joint paper by the National Transitional Jobs Network at Heartland Alliance and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). Innovative City and State Funding Approaches to Supporting Subsidized Employment and Transitional Jobs provides suggestions and examples of innovative funding strategies for subsidized job programs to cities, states, and other public-sector entities that are considering or have decided to implement or expand subsidized employment programming.

Last week, the bipartisan Senate "Gang of 8" introduced S. 744—the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. If enacted, this bill would be the largest scale change to immigration laws in over 25 years.

One of the major hallmarks of the bill is that it provides a path to citizenship for aspiring citizens, many of whom have lived and worked in this country for many years. Other key elements of the bill include border security measures, reforms to family- and employment-based immigration policies, and interior enforcement measures including the requirement, phased in over 5 years, for all employers to use an Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) to ensure that all newly hired employees are legally eligible to work in the U.S.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the program created by welfare reform in 1996—is a flexible block grant, meaning that while the federal government sets some general rules, states have been given an enormous amount of control, both over the ways that they spend the federal funds they receive and over the rules that they set for families receiving TANF cash assistance. This flexibility results in an enormous amount of variation from state to state.

Most of the time, when I see an article about a state legislative proposal that affects TANF cash assistance, it’s about something bad that is happening. Outrage drives people to forward the article to their friends, to press the share button or to retweet. This is helpful—for example, the public outrage over the Tennessee proposal to punish families for children’s failure at school by cutting benefits led to the sponsor withdrawing the bill. But the good things that some state legislators are trying to do in TANF don’t always get as much attention. So, this week, I’m highlighting some of the positive developments in the states.

This week, committees in the Tennessee legislature approved a bill that would cut parents' TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) cash assistance benefits if their children failed to be promoted to the next grade at school. This proposal is based on an inaccurate and stereotyped belief that poor parents need to be coerced into caring about their children's school achievement. If enacted, it will create new paperwork burdens for schools and welfare agencies, already straining under budget cuts. Most importantly, it risks pushing the most vulnerable children even deeper into poverty.

If legislators really want to improve educational outcomes for children whose families receive TANF, here are some policies that would actually make a difference.

In the midst of tighter budgets and cuts in benefits spending, some states are focusing on more effective administration of public benefits that support working families. They're doing so because they know that these benefits, which include programs focused on nutrition, health care and child care, help families become and stay employed and promote children's success in school and life. By streamlining eligibility processes and cutting red tape for these programs, states can reduce administrative costs and make it less daunting for working families to get the help they need.